


i'd lie if i told you

by theviolonist



Category: The Hour
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-05-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 11:22:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/823718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That's what Kiki's mother told her before she died: this world cheats, so you gotta cheat too. You gotta make your way, or you'll be eaten alive.</p><p>Kiki is only heeding the advice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'd lie if i told you

That's what Kiki's mother told her before she died: this world cheats, so you gotta cheat too. You gotta make your way, or you'll be eaten alive. 

Kiki is only heeding the advice. 

-

You're a startled thing. You're young, you're beautiful, you think you can do it all but it's 1947 and the soil is fresh, the war is still there, the seeds don't grow. You wait for things that don't come. The world is black. Mother says – you gotta be black too. You gotta be Persephone. 

So Kiki sets in search for her Hades; someone to protect her. 

-

The street is damp, smells of piss and danger. Kiki - her name's not actually Kiki, but now she doesn't say, not anymore - shivers; she grinds her teeth. By day she scours the streets for work, and at night she goes back to sleep for a few hours in her crummy, dust-black apartment where she grabs a few hours of shut-eye before going back out. They always tell her the same thing, that they've got no work for her, but a pretty thing like her... shouldn't be hard to find something, something really profitable that is. She pretends not to understand the insinuations, says thank you, a quirk of her chapped lips, and leaves. Her mittens are full of holes. One day she'll say yes; it's just a matter of time. 

There's an old prostitute at the corner, with garish orange lipstick and eyes drowned in folds of wrinkled skin. "It's a world of men," she says when Kiki asks her for a light.

Kiki starts. She's still a child, after all, it's crazy but it's true. Maybe there's a chance - "They said -"

The woman smiles at her, softly condescending. "It don't matter what they said," she says, without anger or kindness. "It's always gonna be that way. You gotta fend for yourself, dove. Find yourself a nice husband but if you can't," _if you're like me, if you wanted freedom_ , "fend for yourself." She pinches Kiki's cheek; the sting is hot and sharp. "You gotta get a thicker skin, pet."

Turns out the thickest skin gets is when it grows over bruises. Kiki doesn't see the irony in it the first time she looks at herself in the mirror, but it sinks in after a while, with bones twice-grown: the armor she protects herself with is painted over with their colors. 

-

What did you want to be? What do you see when you close your eyes? Kiki sees a racing car with a golden hood and a roaring engine. She sees herself alone, and free, out of this godforsaken country, driving towards a place where the weather is always extreme and the natives are sharp-eyed and mysterious. That's probably what Raphael Cilenti reads on her face when she applies to be a waitress at his place, a club way too fancy to hire her. In the future she'll understand that she was an open book, and learn how to close the shutters. 

But she hasn't then, not yet. Raphael leans over the counter, smelling of clean cologne, a wisp of dark hair curled around his ear. "Hello, darling," he says, his voice smooth like chocolate. 

"Hello," Kiki says. She hands him her resume, ashamed of her dark hands and dirty fingernails. _My mother raised me right,_ she wants to say, but doesn't. 

Raphael steps out from behind the bar. He touches her arm and she doesn't recoil, she's not afraid, it's warm here in _El Paradis_ and there's soft jazz streaming from somewhere, it's so comfortable Kiki could weep. "Take a seat," Raphael says, and that in itself is more hospitality anyone has shown her in months. 

His eyes are gentle when he asks, "What brings you here?" 

Kiki doesn't tell her life story to strangers. This man, though, is he a stranger? He tilts his head, he'll listen, and it's so long since she hasn't talked. "My mother -" Kiki starts, and after that it's a ball of string that unravels until she's the last cotton thread, taut and exhausted but somewhat unburdened. 

Rapael sighs softly. His palms are flat on the table; he doesn't try to hold her hand but after a while he connects their fingertips, as though he were trying to heal her just through that small touch. 

But then time catches up on Kiki, and there are thick, richly patterned drapes on the windows in the club but outside the night must be falling, it's time to go, the day's work isn't finished. Kiki stands up, gives Raphael a grateful smile. "I have to go," she says. "It's getting late."

Raphael reclines in his chair. For a second his eyes go hard and he looks almost calculating. His gaze brushes her hip, the side of her breast - Kiki gets an urge to cover herself up -, and then it's gone as quickly as it appeared. He looks in control, relaxed when he says, "Yes. Good night, Miss..."

"Delaine," she says. 

She has a foot out the door when his voice drifts towards her, husky and precise. "I'll expect you here tomorrow morning at ten, then."

-

Kiki shows up the next morning at nine in her best dress, light blue _chiffon_ that's way too flimsy for the season. But it's all she has, so she sucks it up and walks in, barely keeping her teeth from chattering. The soft heat of the room engulfs her. Raphael is sitting at one of the tables, talking with a long, hard-faced white man. He doesn't see her immediately; when he looks up from the table he catches sight of her and smiles. "Miss Delaine," he says. 

She doesn't know what to call him. She's never felt so vulnerable. Maybe that's what her mother was talking about – Hades. "Mister Cilenti."

"I'm so glad you decided to join us," he says, as though there was ever a chance she might not. 

She sets her feet firmly on the ground. "I'm ready to work," she says. She sounds too earnest; the man at the table snorts, looking down with a scowl when Raphael glares at him. "I am," Kiki insists. 

"I know you are, my dear," Raphael says. Something like a smirk flits over his lips. He claps his hands, a magician. "Girls!"

A gaggle of girls bound from behind a curtain, as though waiting to be called out. Kiki wonders if they were, if everything is as dramatic as it seems or only an elaborate _mise en scène_ , but she's still too green to see the right answer, the strings behind the puppet show.

She looks at the girls instead: a tight group of exotic birds, with their feather-adorned hips and the bangles around their wrists, knuckles against their waists; their smile is ethereal, flits like a switch between bored and engaging. Kiki is blinded, the excitation frightens her – she can't imagine she'll ever be like that, so pretty and graceful, she doesn't know where to look: their pointy-toed feet, the shiny cupid bow of their lips, their wasp-like waists. Later she'll train her gaze, she'll know: look at the eyes first, because the eyes are the only thing that don't move in that outfit, the eyes are dead fish eyes, unavoidably dull. 

"Oh, Mister Cilenti," says Kiki now, at eighteen. "Are those girls dancers?"

She's too distracted to see the gaze he rests on her then – the same she gets when she goes to the market on sunday morning and tries to determin whether that gutted fish is worth spending the money or not. Maybe she would've run if she'd seen. When she thinks about it now it seems to her she wouldn't have, because she was too young and too stupid, but she doesn't realize that the seeds of who she would become were already there. 

"They are," says Cilenti in that smooth voice she'll learn to fear. "They're just like you, darling. They're who you're gonna be."

At least he wasn't lying about that. 

-

Kiki does become like those girls, with their glitter and their endless legs, their heavy-lidded eyes and their johns. She drinks and she laughs and she dances, the fire goes out of her pupils and in the end it's not even that sad, it's not like she wasn't expecting it somewhere, in some corner of her desperate heart. Kiki Delaine. True, she was always meant to be a whore. 

She's good at it, too. They like her blonde hair and her sharp traits, the way she's never too sweet, too saccharine, she's almost like a real woman, only if you shake her a little she does what you ask, and you can pay her pimp over the counter. 

Raphael never stopped being sweet, that's probably the worst thing about him. It's a slick kind of sweetness, oily and sleek; it just slowly turned dangerous to boot, but that too was always there, an afterthought Kiki chose to ignore. He's Hades all right, the dark king of the underworld: he holds them all in his hands and they dance in the hollow of his palms, afraid they'll burn their feet if they stop. 

But Kiki's life isn't that bad, it's not that miserable. Once you learn to forget that your body is yours and you give it up, you close your eyes and you bear it, it's better than life on the street. At least in _Le Paradis_ there's warm clothes and the promise that no one will hurt your face if you do what you're told, because your face is your moneymaker, at least during the day.

Sure her mama's choice of career for her wouldn't have been whoring, but at least it's nice whoring, and it's not like her mama's there to see it anyway. 

-

The new girl reminds Kiki so much of herself it actually kind of hurts. 

It's funny, in a way, because they've got nothing in common: she's a long, nervous Latin girl, with curves where there should be and that smile. She'll be ready in no time, but she's scared. She's so scared, and Kiki can see right through it, and she doesn't like it.

So Kiki – Kiki plays the mean girl. She shoves and snarls and thinks, _get out of there while you can_ , but the girl cowers and then she starts to shove back, which is when Kiki lets down, gives up. It's easier to give up now. At first there was pride, that feeling you keep from childhood when people tell you that being brave is what matters. It's not true. What matters is staying alive. 

"What's she got against me, anyway?" she overhears Rosa asking Jess during smoke break, behind the club near the dumpsters. 

There's a rustle of cloth and pearls, Jess shrugging. "Dunno. It's Kiki, she's like that."

"Like what?" Rosa asks too many questions. That's gonna get her in trouble, but Kiki won't tell her that either. She's not anyone's guardian angel. 

Jess grinds her cigarette under her heel – a long-acquired skill, getting it right in the dark, pointy heel crushing the red-hot ember. "You know. She still -"

And that's where Kiki takes off. She doesn't need anyone to pity her – besides, she doesn't. She doesn't still. She's given up on that, too. 

-

She doesn't mean it to happen. 

Kiki's policy is to get in and out, no trouble, no involvement. She likes the other girls because they're unattached, they're afraid to make friends with anyone and that's okay with Kiki. She's fine with living with people who could end up lying in a ditch tomorrow morning because they said the wrong thing. Well – maybe fine isn't the right word.

But Rosa isn't like that. It's easy to see what she was before: ambitious, driven and hot, the kind of girl who has fire, who you're afraid to touch because you'll either get burnt or catch what she has, that incandescence. She sways in the backroom with her heavy eyelids and pouty lips, some clients don't like her because she's too much, too plump and her eyes too black, the same way some of them won't touch Kiki and call her the Ice Queen. It's an exaggeration but Kiki likes it anyway, will take everything she can get.

But she means to stay away. She has enough problems like that, johns who fall in love with her and think it's not one-sided just because she's good at faking and likes shiny things. Men are funny like that: Kiki knows they don't actually care if she loves them back, all they want is to possess her, and there's no end to that.

Raphael's guys always take care of it, but that day it hangs heavy on her frame, would almost make her stumble if she wasn't as well-trained as she is. It's having to listen to all those promises, the 'I'll get you out of there's, the 'You won't have to live like that anymore's, that's what she can't bear, to look them in the eye and see through the lies, see that what they're really promising is a lifetime of misery with a man too cowardly to take his chance on a love that gives as good as it gets.

"You okay?" asks Rosa. Kiki doesn't want her to watch, doesn't want her to care. 

"Piss off," she bites. 

Rosa laughs, her laugh is clear and thick and charming and Kiki hates it, but right now she's tired, she feels a hundred years old and she shouldn't feel like this because she's barely twenty-three and life shouldn't be that. 

Rosa lights a cigarette. Kiki knows she's more innocent than she pretends. Everything about her gives her away. "What's going on?"

"None of your business," Kiki says, but now it's defeated. Now she's a common whore reclining in her chair, chest sweating under her fake diamonds, exhausted. "You know."

"Mm," says Rosa. Helpful. "You want a drag?"

"Sure, yeah."

And Kiki extends a hand, she takes the cigarette, which is one more thing she should never have done, because she doesn't get attached to people and especially not to Rosa Maria Ramirez, with her ridiculous name and her list of dreams ten miles long, and her stupid smile and her heart, her golden heart. 

-

Of course Kiki falls in love with Rosa. It's exactly the kind of thing she would do.

She would fall in love with someone who would love her back, breathlessly, without reason or caution, love her like a child with her arms open and too many things to give. She would fall in a love that throws her against walls and kisses her sweetly, and lets her sleep on her shoulder and sings her Spanish lullabies when she's tired and sore. 

She would love a love that doesn't think it ought to hide but does, does have to. She would fall in love with Rosa and watch her and _see_ her, see how beautiful she is and miss all the booby traps, the flaws and the nooks where the dark things hide. She would fall in a love that's almost transcendent, something out of one of the fairytales Kiki used to dream about. 

It just isn't fair. This whole thing. It's not fair. Rosa is too sweet, too beautiful, she's a whore, she's not good for Kiki and Kiki doesn't do love because she can't afford to. "I'd miss you if you were gone," is the farthest she goes in her declarations but Rosa takes it and drinks the rest from her gestures and her looks, finds the things Kiki doesn't say in the corners of her skin where no one's ever bothered to look. 

And then she looks down at Kiki in the darkness, her breasts grazing Kiki's as she hauls herself over her; she should look like the Big Bad Wolf but she doesn't, she's sweet, she's one of those pure and perfect princesses, even with the smudged make-up and that gash on her lip, she says, "I know."

Kiki thinks _she knows_ , but the panic doesn't come, instead a big silvery wave in her chest, over her eyes, like a rising tide. 

-

In many ways, Kiki is stronger than Rosa. She's got more bite, she's prettier, and quite simply she's been longer at the job - she's _better_. 

So when Rosa says, "We should run away," what Kiki _should_ say is "No way in hell."

What she actually says is slightly different. What she actually says is, "Yeah. We should."

And then she puts her arms around Rosa's waist, joins her hands in her back like they're normal girls, a normal couple of normal girls in the twentieth century and the falseness of this all would make her laugh if at the heart of it wasn't something as small, as ridiculous and precious as love. 

Rosa looks at her, nuzzles her nose in Kiki's neck. "So are we?" she asks after a while. "Where are we gonna go?"

 _Don't think about it too much,_ would probably say Kiki if she was a few years older, with a thicker skin and a few more beatings under her belt. She would draw away and rub her forehead and say sorry, and Rosa would be mad but it would be for the best. Instead she threads her fingers in Rosa's hair, black and luscious and perfect, and she whispers – "Soon."

She used to have big dreams, and she thought – she thought she'd killed them all, one by one, diving them into the acid of this fucked-up life. But what she actually did was put them on the backburner and now they're back, with their disproportionate wings and their outrageous glitter, and they want her to run away. 

-

The worst thing about it, the worst thing about it is it's not what Kiki had dreamed about at all. She did think about snogging girls a few times, covertly, but she never thought about it like that – it was always defiant and secret, like a roll of thunder, something that jumps low in your stomach. 

This is different. This is a life: if Kiki were reckless she would imagine spending her whole life with Rosa, something stupid and romantic like taking off to Paris, buying a car and touring France, walking barefoot on a beach somewhere no one can find them. It's the kind of love she wants to have forever, and it only makes it more difficult to know with so much certainty that it won't happen, because forever just isn't for girls like her – like them.

"You know," she tells Rosa once when they're in bed, the morning piercing through the curtains, dauting, "I used to like it. At first."

Rosa doesn't say anything.

Kiki sighs, sinks deeper into the mattress, hoping it will suffocate her, maybe. "I used to think I would be a star. I thought I was gonna be the next Marilyn Monroe. Raphael told me I would be in the movies in no time and I believed him, I did. I don't know why, it's not like I was that stupid, even back then, but I just – I wanted it so much, you know?"

There's no pity in Rosa's eyes. There's only hard, naked understanding - it's what Kiki wanted, and she's so grateful for it she thinks she might choke. "But I'm never gonna be in the movies, am I? I'm just a whore, and you're -" she links their fingers under the sheet, nobody will find them, not here, there are still a few hours before the dawn. "This isn't the life I wanted," she whispers. She takes in a shaky breath and would hate herself for it if it wasn't Rosa next to her, a sister, a girl who cries too sometimes and who knows that no one's beautiful when they do, with their make-up running and their eyes dirty red. "But I guess no one does, do they?"

Rosa doesn't talk – she reaches for Kiki, her arms wrapping around Kiki's waist, tight, too tight – with their bellies pressed and every inch of their bodies connected, a live wire, pain like it only exists in places like this, low and aching, pain that doesn't go away. Rosa kisses her forehead, her eyelids, her hair. 

"It's a shame," she says slowly. "I would have loved to see you in the movies."

Kiki laughs – a watery, miserable laugh, but a laugh all the same. 

-

They don't often have serious conversations. It's no use ruining your mood talking about closed walls, and that's what this is when you look at it a little closely, a pretty gilded cage with no key inside. Usually they take advantage of every moment they're not working to be together and it's the food, the fuel. They help each other. They teach other what they know, Spanish and the mathematics Rosa learned from her mother – and for the first Kiki gives without reservations, how to do a purl snitch, the recipe to _crêpe flambé_ , what that man who paid for her once taught her about boats. They're like cars, only better.

Kiki only brings it up once, after Jess gets killed in the winter, one bullet to the head for trying to run away with one of the johns. Raphael tells them she's just left, but they find out from the papers anyway, cold fingers wrapped around the paper, gasping in horror even though they should know better by now. 

So she says it – "Rosa," she says, keeping the _Maria_ under her tongue because Maria is a rolled 'r', is a piece of candy and a prayer, "Rosa, if there's ever – I mean, if there's ever a time when you can leave, if you can get away, you do it, okay?"

Rosa furrows her brows. "What do you mean?"

For a second Kiki hesitates. It would be easy to pretend this is all a dream, one of those plans they make for the future that will never get done; say don't worry, it's fine, it's nothing. "I mean, if you can get away, don't wait for me. Don't try to get me out, okay?"

Rosa looks at her, unblinking, and there are tears in her eyes. "What? No, don't be silly. Don't be stupid, of course I'll wait for you. There won't be -"

"I know. But if there ever is. You only get once chance, you know?" She feels melodramatic and cold – she tries to imagine what they look like, two girls in the street in the middle of winter, Kiki with her pretty cap and her white-blond ringlets, her chic little cream coat, gloved hands holding Rosa's, the dark girl with the red coat and the hat. Queer sight.

"I just want to -"

"Don't."

"Rosa..."

Rosa looks away, where the street runs off being gray and damp, soft rain dotting the asphalt, but Kiki takes hold of her jaw and forces her to look. There are bruises under the skin, she's trained to obey, so she does; but she steps back almost immediately, opening her mouth to protest. 

"Promise me," Kiki demands, urgently. This is the most selfish thing she's ever done, she realizes with a jolt.

"No," Rosa says, her voice thrumming and tight. 

"Promise. Please, promise me you'll go. I love you so much," and Kiki is surprised to hear it come out of her mouth, she is, it was never there before, not like that but now – 

She watches it pan out on Rosa's face: first surprise, a flash of joy, abject terror, and then resignation. "Okay," she says, so strung-out it's not even a whisper.

Kiki doesn't ask to hear it again. She's seen too many broken people to still like it. 

-

It's hope. 

It's small, but it's there, it exists between them, this promise. Maybe, one day... and meanwhile they put on their coloured frocks and sing, opening their arms for men who don't love them, who don't love anyone, who are cold and lonely and ambitious. They let themselves be called stupid, pretty and charming. There's money and there's nights spent with ice on your nose to make the swelling go down. 

But there's this love, too, small, hidden, and there's these dreams that stick, despite everything. 

"Hello, Mister," says Kiki with a pretty smile to a man she already knows by heart, even though she just met him – grey suit, slick, probably got a wife and a kid at home, a mistress that asks for too much. She holds out a hand, his eyes slide on her, he likes her. She does her job well, but it doesn't matter, because he doesn't want what's inside and what's inside isn't for him. "I'm Kiki."

The man smiles. "Hector."

Maybe they can, thinks Kiki, already somewhere else, in a room with Rosa's heavy eyelids and pouty mouth. Maybe they can make it out alive.


End file.
